Specifying Content Type in rspec

Question

I'm trying to build an rspec test that sends JSON (or XML) via POST. However, I can't seem to actually get it working:

    json = {.... data ....}.to_json
    post '/model1.json',json,{'CONTENT_TYPE'=>'application/json'}

and this

    json = {.... data ....}.to_json
    post '/model1.json',json,{'Content-Type'=>'application/json'}

any ideas? THANKS!

Bachelorism

Usually you POST to an action in a controller. Why are you posting to a file? – Paraselene

Answer 1

In Rails 3, you can skip the header and @request.env stuff and just add a format parameter to your post call, e.g.:

post :create, format: :json, param: 'Value of Param'

Sievert

Does using format: :json set request.accept and request.content_type to "application/json"? – Theophrastus

This issue on rspec-rails implies that format: :json is the same as request.accept = "application/json". – Theophrastus

It looks like in later versions of rails/rspec, format: :json got changed to as: :json – Frias

Answer 2

There's a way to do this described in this thread -- it's a hack, but it seems to work:

@request.env["HTTP_ACCEPT"] = "application/json"
json = { ... data ... }.to_json
post :create, :some_param => json

Sicken

This works with Rspec 2 and rails 3. (and was extremely difficult to find) Actually, I had to not use .to_json on the thing to get it to behave correctly. Otherwise, everything else worked fine. – Hickerson

Thank you. I had a hard-time searching for solution to my failing tests before reading your answer. – Andromada

I also found that request.accept = 'application/json' will work as well. – Pachton

Answer 3

A lot of frustration and variations and that's what worked for me. Rails 3.2.12 Rspec 2.10

 @request.env["HTTP_ACCEPT"] = "application/json"
 @request.env["CONTENT_TYPE"] = "application/json"
 put :update, :id => 1, "email" => "[email protected]"

Trickle

Thanks! I found out the one to work for me thanks to your answer: @request.env["CONTENT_TYPE"] = "application/json". – Charged

Answer 4

First of all, you don't want to test the built-in conversion of json to hash. Same applies to xml.

You test controller with data as hashes, not bothering wether it's json, xml or from a html form.

But if you would like to do that as an exercise, this is a standalone ruby script to do play with :)

require 'json'
url = URI.parse('http://localhost:3030/mymodels.json')
request = Net::HTTP::Post.new(url.path)
request.content_type="application/json"
request.basic_auth('username', 'password')  #if used, else comment out

hash = {:mymodel => {:name => "Test Name 1", :description => "some data for testing description"}}
request.body = hash.to_json
response = Net::HTTP.start(url.host, url.port) {|http| http.request(request)}
puts response

to switch to xml, use content_type="text/xml" and

request.body = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><somedata><name>Test Name 1</name><description>Some data for testing</description></somedata>"

Garnet

Answer 5

A slightly more elegant test is to use the header helper:

header "HTTP_ACCEPT", "application/json"
json = {.... data ....}.to_json
post '/model1.json', json

Now this does exactly the same thing as setting @env; it's just a bit prettier.

Robbins

Where is this method defined? I get a NoMethodError when I try to call it. – Primogenial

@PaulBrannan It's in rack/test – Robbins

Answer 6

The best way that I have found to test these things is with request tests. Request tests go through the full param parsing and routing stages of Rails. So I can write a test like this:

request_params = {:id => 1, :some_attribute => "some value"}
headers = {'Accept' => 'application/json', 'Content-Type' => 'application/json'}
put "/url/path", request_params.to_json, headers
expect(response).to be_success

Offhand

Answer 7

I think that you can specify the headers with headers param:

post '/model1.json', headers: {'Content-type': 'application/json'}

Following the Rspec documentation of how provide JSON data.

Chercherbourg

Answer 8

@request.env["CONTENT_TYPE"] = "application/json"

OR pass in request

"CONTENT_TYPE" => "application/json"

Kingsize

Answer 9

post '/model1.json', params: {.... data ....}, as: :json

Paraprofessional